Modern smart hospital beds use advanced sensors to monitor weight, prevent falls, and automatically rotate patients to stop bedsores.

Smart beds like the Hillrom Centrella or Stryker ProCuity series are sophisticated medical devices designed to address common hospital complications. Pressure ulcers, or bedsores, affect approximately 2.5 million patients in the United States annually according to the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality. These beds use integrated air cell technology and pressure-sensing mats to automatically redistribute a patient's weight every few minutes.Patient falls are another major concern, with the Joint Commission reporting that hundreds of thousands of falls occur in hospitals each year. Smart beds utilize load cells and infrared sensors to detect movement patterns that suggest a patient is attempting to exit. When these patterns are identified, the bed sends an immediate wireless alert to the nursing station or a mobile device via systems like the Voalte platform.Accurate weight monitoring is critical for medication safety, especially for drugs with narrow therapeutic windows like heparin or chemotherapy. These beds can measure weight with a precision of 0.1 kilograms, ensuring that dosage calculations remain accurate without needing to move the patient to a traditional scale. This integrated technology reduces the physical strain on nurses, who often suffer from musculoskeletal injuries due to manual patient handling.